TOO LATE FOR PILGRIM? Nuclear Regulatory Commission freezes license decisions

TOO LATE FOR PILGRIM? Nuclear Regulatory Commission freezes license decisions

By Frank Mand

Wicked Local Plymouth

Posted Aug 11, 2012 @ 10:00 AM

PLYMOUTH —

Timing is everything. Two months after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission officially renewed the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station's operating license for another 20 years, the commission has frozen final reactor licensing decisions at 19 sites across the country.

The NRC decision came in response to a June U.S. Court Of Appeals decision effectively invalidating the NRC's 2010 updates of both its Waste Confidence Rule and its Temporary Storage Rule. The decision concluded the spent fuel stored at nuclear power plants "poses a dangerous, long-term health and environmental risk."

The Appeals Court decision was based on a petition filed by several groups, including the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Riverkeeper Inc. and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, and involved plants from California (Pacific Gas & Electric's Diablo Canyon facility) to New Hampshire (Nextera's Seabrook Station).

While Pilgrim was not part of the decision, Pilgrim owner Entergy owns two of the facilities named in the NRC's freeze: Grand Gulf in Mississippi and Indian Point in New York state.

At the time of the initial court ruling, Geoff Fettus, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, predicted it would be a "game changer."

"This forces the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to take a hard look at the environmental consequences of producing highly radioactive nuclear waste without a long-term disposal solution," Fettus said. "The court found: 'The Commission apparently has no long-term plan other than hoping for a geologic repository.' "

According to the NRC's memorandum and order, "in particular, the court struck down the Waste Confidence decision's Finding 2, 'that reasonable assurance exists that sufficient geologic repository capacity will be available for disposal of high level waste,' and Finding 4, 'that, if necessary, spent fuel can be stored safely... in its spent fuel pool and either onsite or offsite dry cask storage.'"

When the NRC's decision was announced the Old Colony contacted industry spokesmen and critics, to help understand the potential ramifications.

The office of state Attorney General Martha Coakley, which first began demanding the NRC re-examine the safety implications of spent fuel storage at nuclear plants just weeks after the disaster at Fukushima, saw the announcement as both a confirmation and, perhaps, a first step toward an interim solution.

"This decision by the NRC reaffirms the concerns that our office has raised about the storage of spent fuel pools since 2006," Coakley's office stated. "We have said repeatedly that the risks regarding spent fuel were underestimated by the NRC in its relicensing of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth in June. We continue to appeal that decision through the courts."

Caokley's office also linked the Appeal's Court decision to the growing consensus that the spent fuel fund established to build a permanent, national, spent-fuel storage site might help pay for a mandate for dry cask storage and interim repositories for that spent fuel.

"We need the federal government to remove this material from our generation facilities and decommissioned sites starting yesterday," Coakley's office stated.

The NRC, while acknowledging that "waste confidence" is a critical factor in licensing decisions, has made it clear that it has not determined how it will ultimately respond to the court's decision.

It could be a simple matter of clarifying – to the Appeal's Court's satisfaction – the technical underpinnings of the Waste Confidence and Temporary Storage rules. It could be a requirement that spent fuel that can be safely removed from spent fuel pools (in Pilgrim's case, approximately 3,000 fuel rod assemblies) all be moved to dry cask storage.

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan told the Old Colony that while the commissioners have promised they will not issue licenses that are "dependent upon the Waste Confidence Decision or the Temporary Storage Rule until the court's remand is appropriately addressed," the process of reviewing those license applications will still move forward.

Pilgrim critic Mary Lampert, director of the Duxbury-based Pilgrim Watch, said she's trying hard not to see the cloud in the silver lining.

"This order does not seem to say the commission will not issue licenses until it finishes taking whatever actions it chooses to take to comply with the court order," she offered. "It provides some breathing room but it still leaves the commission able to decide to continue licensing while it implements the steps needed to comply with the court's order and to deny waste confidence contentions on the basis that the entire issue is generic.

"Did we just get crumbs?" Lampert asked rhetorically, adding "but seeing as how NRC starves the public on all things related to public health and safety and overfeeds the industry, I suppose we shouldn't complain!"

The Union of Concerns Scientists' David Lochbaum offered a glimmer of hope to Lampert and other critics of what they believe are overcrowded spent fuel pools.

"As I understand this, the NRC must develop the technical basis for the Waste Confidence Decision used to support issuing operating reactor licenses," Lochbaum said.

And while Pilgrim and other relicensed reactors are not immediately affected because the ruling looks forward rather than back, Lochbaum said, "if the NRC determines that additional measures are required, those new steps would likely be applicable across the board."

It is also possible that Pilgrim's critics will be able to play a role in the deliberations over the Waste Confidence and Temporary Storage rules.

"The petitioners seek assurance that they will be able to participate in future NRC proceedings on waste confidence," the NRC notes in the official Memorandum and Order issued this week. "We hereby provide that assurance.

"The public will be afforded an opportunity to comment in advance on any generic waste confidence document that the NRC issues on remand," the NRC order also notes, "be it a fresh rule, a policy statement or an environmental impact statement."

A statement issued by Lou Zeller, the executive director of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, one of the original petitioners to the Court of Appeals, is cautiously optimistic.

"It appears that the commissioners have, at least initially, grasped the magnitude of the court's ruling," Zeller wrote on the League's website. "We are optimistic that (the NRC) will set up a fundamentally transparent, fair process under the National Environmental Policy Act to examine the serious environmental impacts of spent nuclear fuel storage and disposal prior to licensing or relicensing nuclear reactors."